The bluebird is native to North America, and has become a worldwide symbol of love and happiness. The iconic 'bluebird of happiness' can be traced back to at least 1908, when it appeared in a Nobel Prize-winning play, 'The Blue Bird.'
The 'Bluebird of Happiness'
A popular American song of 1934, 'Bluebird of Happiness' by Sandor Harmati and Edward Heyman, was recorded twice by Jan Peerce and also by Art Mooney and His Orchestra. That song is probably the origin of the American phrase 'the bluebird of happiness,' which is also mentioned in the film K-Pax and alluded to in the song 'Over The Rainbow' from the 'Wizard of Oz.'
In 1942, the popular song (There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover used them among other imagery to lift spirits.
In the film Sesame Street Presents: Follow that Bird, the Sleaze Brothers kidnap Big Bird and press him into service in their fun fair, where he is painted blue and billed as the Blue Bird of Happiness. In a witty play on the polysemy of the word 'blue,' Big Bird sings the mournful song'No Wonder I'm So Blue.'
A scene in the Disney film 'The Rescuers' uses the bluebird as a symbol of 'faith ... you see from afar.'
Also mentioned in the 'The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya' episode 'The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya part III'
The lyrics of the They Might Be Giants song Birdhouse in Your Soul, by John Linnell, include the phrase 'blue bird of friendliness.'
The bluebird is mentioned at the end of the 1968 Beatles movie Yellow Submarine, when the leader of the Blue Meanie claims that his 'cousin is the bluebird of happiness'.
Folklore
Among some Native Americans, the bluebird has mythological or literary significance.
According to the Cochiti tribe, the firstborn son of Sun was named Bluebird. In the tale 'The Sun's Children,' from Tales of the Cochiti Indians (1932) by Ruth Benedict, the male child of the sun is named Bluebird (Culutiwa).
The Navajo identify the Mountain Bluebird as a spirit in animal form, associated with the rising sun. The Bluebird Song is sung to remind tribe members to wake at dawn and rise to greet the sun:
Bluebird said to me,
'Get up, my grandchild.
It is dawn,' it said to me.
The Bluebird Song is still performed in social settings, including the nine-day Ye'iibicheii winter Nightway ceremony, where it is the final song, performed just before sunrise of the ceremony's last day.
Most O'odham lore associated with the 'bluebird' likely refers not to the bluebirds (Sialia) but to the Blue Grosbeak.
Bluebirds
Three species of blue-headed North American thrushes (Turdidae) occupy the genus Sialia. The most widespread and best-known is the Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis), breeding from Canada's prairie provinces to Texas and from the Maritimes to Florida; discrete populations of this species are also found from southeastern Arizona through west Mexico into Guatemala and Nicaragua. The Mountain Bluebird (S. currucoides) breeds on high-elevation plains from central Alaska to Arizona and New Mexico, and the Western Bluebird (S. mexicana) inhabits dry coniferous forests from extreme southwestern Canada to Baja California and from the Great Basin south into west Mexico.
